In recent years with increasing interest and concern with environmental problems, numerous systems have been proposed for removing and collecting oil floating on water surfaces. A principal disadvantage which has become apparent on seeking to put the numerous prior proposals into practice has been their marked inability to work effectively in a rough sea. This is especially so in the case of suction devices, where wave motion results in the device ingesting large quantities of sea water along with the oil, rendering the rate of oil removal unsatisfactorily slow and also resulting in a substantial volume of oil and sea water which must be retained on board a vessel for subsequent processing.
Of course, numerous proposals have been made for separating oil and water, but such arrangements are inherently bulky and are best suited to operation on land and with relatively small through-puts. So far as the inventor is at present aware, no recovery and separation system for oil and water has been previously proposed specifically for use at sea and proved successful. A major problem is the paradoxical requirement that an antipollution vessel working in a heavily polluted sea is itself bound by the oil discharge regulations not to discharge into the sea water which contains significant quantities of oil. The need, therefore, which has not previously been satisfied, so far as the present inventor is aware, is for a system which is both relatively quick and effective in separating oil and water.